[whakim]

Yes, newspapers have been printing/selling the equivalent of clickbait and "fake news" for as long as newspapers have been around. People like this and it gets a lot of eyeballs. Newspapers like USA Today/New York Post/Daily Mail etc. do this to at least some degree and do pretty well for it.

That being said, many of the top-circulating newspapers[1] don't trade on simply reporting the "most-engaging" information. People read the WSJ or NYTimes because they're trustworthy and tend to have a high standard of journalistic integrity, deeply investigate issues and challenge powerful interests. (If you don't believe that's true you probably don't read the WSJ or NYTimes, which makes my point for me...)

Facebook and social media in general does the former, not the latter. And then combines it with algorithms that target content at those most likely to be engaged by it, leading to a cesspool of polarization, echo chambers, and inflammatory arguments.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_newspapers_in_the_Unit...